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Year 299 AC/8 ABY
Oldtown, The Reach
Luke traced his finger along the ancient Valyrian text. The parchment crackled beneath his touch like dried leaves as he looked between the translations. The restricted archives smelled of dust and old leather mixed with the sharp tang of the preservative oils the maesters used. Three days of this had left his eyes burning from squinting at faded ink by candlelight.
"These are glass candles," Marwyn said while lifting a black stone cylinder from its iron stand. "Dragonglass, the smallfolk call the material. The Valyrians knew its true nature though."
The obsidian surface caught the dim light of the archive to create depths within depths. Luke leaned forward. The Force prickled along his spine like static before a lightning strike.
"They have been dead for centuries," Marwyn said. His scarred fingers traced the sharp edges of the candle. "Cold stone and nothing more. Until recently."
Luke extended his hand toward the obsidian without quite touching it. The Force sang through the object like a tamed river flowing into a primordial ocean.
"What do they do?"
"See," Marwyn said. His voice dropped to barely above a whisper. "Across vast distances and through time itself, some claim. The Valyrians used them to maintain their empire by speaking mind to mind across thousands of leagues."
"May I?" Luke asked.
Marwyn nodded slowly. "If you can wake it, you are meant to."
Luke pressed his palm against the candle. The Force flowed through him into the stone.
Heat. Light. The tip of the candle bloomed with pale fire that was as colorless as starlight.
The archive walls dissolved. Luke stood in a swamp where the air was thick with moisture and the smell of rotting vegetation. Gnarltrees twisted toward a green sky while their roots disappeared into murky water that rippled with unseen life.
"Patience you must have, young Skywalker."
Luke spun. A diminutive figure perched on a moss-covered log while leaning on a gimer stick. Those ancient eyes held that knowing smile.
"Master Yoda?"
"Nine hundred years I walked the galaxy. Nine hundred years of teaching and learning." Yoda's ears drooped slightly. "But home, I never spoke of. Shame, perhaps. Or sorrow."
The swamp shifted. Luke glimpsed something impossible. Cities of living wood spiraled into the canopy while beings moved through the Force like fish through water.
"My people, they were. The Force, we knew not as weapon or tool. It was breath itself." Yoda's image flickered. "Lost now. All lost. But you stand where two rivers meet. The Force you know, and the force that sleeps in the bones of this world."
"Master, I do not understand."
"Understanding comes with time. But know this. The enemy you face has walked both paths. Ice and shadow he commands, but once he only craved warmth."
The vision shattered. Luke gasped and jerked his hand back from the now-dark candle. His palm bore no burns, yet phantom heat pulsed through his fingers.
Marwyn studied Luke with those unsettling eyes. "You saw something."
"A teacher. From very far away." Luke flexed his fingers to shake the lingering sensation. What did Master Yoda mean? Was there a connection? It seemed impossible.
The heavy door groaned open. Jon entered first followed by a round-faced young man in Night's Watch blacks who clutched a leather satchel against his chest like a shield. The forehead of the boy gleamed with sweat despite the chill of the archive.
"Master Luke. Archmaester Marwyn," the young man said, his voice cracking slightly. "I am Samwell Tarly. Jon said you might need help with translations?"
Luke looked up from his text. He immediately sensed a faint tremor in the Force around the boy. It was not strong, barely a whisper compared to the blazing presence of Jon, but it was unmistakably there. It was like finding a single star in daylight. Easy to miss unless you knew where to look.
"Welcome, Sam." Luke kept his voice neutral and filed the discovery away. Another Force-sensitive here of all places. But with the Stark children already stretching his time thin and the threat beyond the Wall growing, it was better to focus on what they could use now. "Jon tells me you read High Valyrian?"
"And the Old Tongue, and even some Ghiscari." Sam's nervousness gave way to enthusiasm as he set his satchel on the table. "I was sent to become a maester. But Lord Commander Mormont also sent me to research the Long Night, though I do not know why. I have been collecting accounts from different sources to piece together what really happened."
Alleras leaned back in her chair. The candlelight caught the sharp angles of her disguised features. "Careful, watchman. These dusty tomes might be too exciting for someone used to the thrilling literary collection at Castle Black."
Sam's cheeks reddened. Jon cut in before he could respond. "The Night's Watch is a noble order protecting the realm. Show some respect."
"Maester Aemon takes great care of the books at Castle Black," Sam added quickly. "Even if it is far less than the Citadel."
Interesting. He does have a backbone behind the meekness. "Well, you are here now. We could use another set of eyes on these texts."
Marwyn pushed a stack of volumes toward Sam. "Start with these. We are looking for any references to the Last Hero, the Night's King, or methods used to end the first Long Night."
Sam nodded eagerly and pulled out a chair. Its legs scraped against stone. Luke returned to his own reading, though part of his attention remained on Sam. The Force sensitivity of the boy might be weak, but sometimes the Force worked through the smallest conduits.
They worked in companionable silence for perhaps an hour broken only by the scratch of quills and rustle of pages. Luke had just begun examining a text on secondary accounts of the forging of Valyrian steel when he noticed an odd resonance from one of the untranslated volumes on the far shelf. The Force practically hummed around it, but the sensation felt locked somehow. Dormant.
Luke stood and retrieved the book. It was thick and bound in what looked like weirwood bark with no visible title. The moment his fingers touched it, he felt the Force recoil slightly. It was as if the book itself was rejecting him.
"Strange." He brought it back to the table. "Sam, you mentioned you are good with languages. Can you make anything of this?"
Sam reached for the book. "Let me see."
The instant the fingers of Sam made contact with the binding, his entire body went rigid. His eyes rolled back to show only white. A surge of Force energy erupted from him like a geyser. The candles flickered and frost spread across the surface of the table in spiraling patterns.
"Seven hells!" Marwyn jerked backward.
Jon half-rose from his chair. "Sam!"
Luke held up a hand while watching intently. This was not possession or an attack. It was communion. The book was speaking through Sam by using his latent Force sensitivity as a conduit. Psychometry.
After perhaps thirty seconds, Sam gasped and slumped forward. He caught himself on the table. His eyes returned to normal, though they darted around wildly as if seeing the room for the first time.
"I am sorry. Did I do something wrong?" Sam's voice shook. "I did not mean to. I do not know what happened!"
"You did nothing wrong." Luke kept his tone calm and reassuring. Through the Force, he could feel the terror of Sam mixing with confusion and a touch of awe. "What did you see?"
Sam blinked at him. "How did you know I saw anything?"
"Call it intuition. Please, tell us."
Sam's hands trembled as he touched the book again more gingerly this time. "It is called 'Singers of Earth and Stone.' It is about the Children of the Forest. They were not just primitive forest dwellers. They could manipulate nature itself. They could make the trees grow and shape stone with their songs. They taught some of the First Men their arts. The gifted ones. The ones who could hear the music of the earth."
Alleras leaned forward with her disguise momentarily forgotten in her fascination. "The First Men learned magic from the Children?"
"Some did." Sam's voice grew stronger as he continued. "But there was always mistrust. The First Men feared what they did not understand and kept the Children at arm's length even during the Pact. They would trade, but never truly mingle. Until a chief's daughter fell in love with one of the Children."
He swallowed hard. "A male. Which was rare even then. From their love, a child was born. But the chief found out about his daughter's affair. He called his own grandchild an abomination. He said it was against nature itself. Even the Children of the Forest turned against them and cut off the male from their sacred groves."
The archive fell silent except for the guttering candles. Luke could feel the weight of the story pressing down on them all.
"The family fled. They were hunted by both races. The child grew into a young man, stronger than any human, able to command nature like the Children but with the passion and rage of a human. When they finally cornered the family and killed his parents before his eyes..." Sam's voice dropped to a whisper. "He broke. He reached into the earth itself and pulled out something dark. Something that had been sleeping since the world was young. The sun disappeared. The cold came. And the dead began to walk."
Jon's knuckles were white where he gripped the table. "The Long Night. It was caused by one person?"
"One person's grief and rage," Sam corrected. "Amplified by power that should never have been touched."
Luke absorbed this information. Pieces clicked together in his mind. A Force user driven to the dark side by loss and betrayal raised the dead through sheer will and hatred. Accounts of the fall of his own father were horrific enough, but this went beyond. Only a few Sith throughout history had pulled the dark side to this scale.
"Is there anything about stopping it?" Luke asked. "How they ended the first Long Night?"
Sam looked confused. "Why would you ask about stopping it? The Long Night ended thousands of years ago."
Before Luke could answer, Marwyn cleared his throat. "These are strange times, Samwell. Everything we learn now can be the anchor for the future."
Sam's face paled, but his scholarly instincts kicked in. "There might be more. Let me check." He ran his fingers along the spine of the book before pressing on what looked like a simple knot in the bark binding. The book fell open to reveal that the back half had been hollowed out.
Nestled inside was a perfect cube of crystal about the size of a child's fist with geometric patterns etched into each face.
Luke's breath caught. "Don't touch it!"
Everyone froze.
"What is it?" Marwyn asked, his usual calm cracking slightly.
Luke studied the object while extending his senses through the Force. No darkness. No corruption. Just information. Vast amounts of it compressed and stored in crystal matrix. "It is a holocron. A teaching device. But some can be trapped or cursed. Let me examine it first."
He lifted the holocron with the Force. He rotated it slowly in the air. The crystal caught the candlelight to throw rainbow patterns across the walls. No warning pulses. No sense of danger. If anything, it felt almost eager to share its knowledge.
"It seems safe." Luke lowered it to the table. "These devices store memories, lessons, sometimes entire personalities of their creators. But they usually require Force sensitivity to activate."
Luke extended his hand toward the suspended holocron. He called upon the Force to activate it. The crystal remained stubbornly inert. Its geometric faces caught the candlelight but offered nothing more. He frowned and adjusted his approach. Sometimes these devices required specific emotional resonances or particular Force techniques.
Nothing.
"Strange," Luke murmured. He lowered his hand. "I can sense the information stored within, but it is not responding to standard activation methods." He circled the floating cube to study each etched pattern. "Some holocrons are keyed to specific Force signatures. This one seems particularly selective."
"Then how do we do this?" Marwyn began.
"Let everyone examine it first," Luke suggested. "Sometimes physical contact can trigger dormant responses."
They passed the holocron around the table. Marwyn held it up to the light while muttering about crystalline structures. Alleras turned it over in her hands and traced the geometric patterns. Sam cradled it nervously as if it might explode.
When Jon took it, everything changed.
The holocron erupted with blue-white light. Jon yelped and dropped it, but the reflexes of Luke were faster. He caught it with the Force and suspended it in midair as a figure materialized above it.
The man stood tall, perhaps six feet, with the distinctive long face and brown hair of the Stark line. But his clothes were wrong. A brown robe sat over tunics that belonged to no era of Westeros Luke had studied. A lightsaber hung at his belt.
Sam's voice came out as a squeak. "Is that floating?"
"Yes, Sam," Jon responded, awestruck.
"And did someone just appear from inside it?"
"Yes, Sam."
"I think I need to sit down."
"You are already sitting."
The hologram began to speak. Luke's heart nearly stopped. The words coming from the mouth of the figure were not the Common Tongue or High Valyrian or any language of this world.
"Greetings. I am Jedi Master Brandon Stark. If you are viewing this recording, then the worst has come to pass."
The accent was archaic and the pronunciation slightly off, but it was unmistakably Galactic Basic Standard. The others looked confused and unable to understand, but Luke hung on every word.
"I came to this world following a disturbance in the Force unlike anything the Council had encountered. We feared Sith involvement, perhaps even a new weapon or dark side nexus. What I found was far worse."
The hologram flickered. The expression of Brandon Stark grew grim.
"This planet exists at a convergence point in the Force where the barriers between life and death grow thin. Someone or something has been manipulating that convergence by turning the Force itself necrotic. The very nature of reality here is being twisted toward undeath."
Luke translated quickly for the others. He kept his voice steady despite his racing thoughts. A Jedi Master here thousands of years ago. How was that possible?
Brandon continued. "I arrived to find the local inhabitants fighting against the corruption. They call it the Long Night. The dead walk animated by a will that exists in the Force but also outside it in the spaces between life and death."
The hologram gestured. Images appeared of armies of the dead, massive ice spiders, and a figure in armor of ice with eyes like blue stars leading them all.
"I allied myself with a local clan of warriors and with the native Force-sensitives. The Children of the Forest they are called. Small beings, but powerful in their own way. They have developed techniques I have never seen, using the Force to commune directly with nature to see through the eyes of trees and animals."
Jon grabbed Luke's arm. "He is describing greenseers. Warging."
Luke nodded and continued to translate as Brandon spoke.
"We fought for thirteen years. I tried to contact the Council to call for reinforcements, but something about this planet blocks long-range communications. The darkness here interferes with hyperspace signals and traps them in the magnetic field of the planet. I was alone."
The sadness in the voice of Brandon transcended language. Even those who could not understand his words felt it.
"But I learned. The Children taught me their ways, and I taught them mine. Together, we discovered that the enemy could not be defeated through strength alone. The one who commands the dead draws power from death itself with every fallen soldier that joins his army. We needed another way."
The hologram flickered again. When it stabilized, Brandon looked older and worn down.
"We are preparing for a final push. The Children have shared their deepest secrets on how to bind the Force into physical objects and how to create barriers that even the undead cannot cross. We are going to build a Wall with the help from the Children. A Wall of ice and magic and Force energy that can push the abomination back."
Luke's translation faltered. "He is saying the Wall is a binding itself against the dead?"
"But to power such a construction and to make it last..." The face of the hologram Brandon was grave. "I will not survive it. This will be my last recording. If you are viewing this, it means the Wall we built has failed or is failing. The enemy has returned."
Static interrupted the image. When it cleared, Brandon was speaking faster and urgently.
"Listen carefully. The Night's King cannot be killed by conventional means. He exists partially in the Force and partially in the physical world. First, to defeat his legions, you need the frozen fire."
The hologram brought up an image of a jagged black stone.
"The obsidian of this world resonates. It is not living crystal like the lightsaber hearts of my home, yet it conducts and stores the Force with ferocious intensity. It acts as a battery and a blade. The Children call it dragonglass. We forged weapons from it. It severs the necrotic bonds binding the dead to this plane. It is the only material of this world capable of shattering the magic that animates them."
The image of Brandon faded slightly, his voice growing faint. He looked down at the jagged spearhead of obsidian he held in his holographic hand.
"Find the dragonglass. Arm yourselves. Without it, you fight a shadow that cannot bleed." The hologram seemed to stare intently at the object. "It is fascinating. A material that can hold the Force like a cup holds water, yet remains cold to the touch. If I had the time, the things I could learn from this stone. It sings when you push power into it. It hungers for the energy."
Brandon looked up again. His expression hardened as he returned to the urgency of the moment. "But time is what we lack. To stop the Night King himself, you must..."
The holocron sputtered and went dark.
"No!" Jon reached for it. "What happened?"
Luke caught the holocron as it fell. He examined it closely. "A glitch—I mean, a mishap. The holocron is damaged."
"Damaged how?" Alleras asked.
"Time, possibly. Or the unique Force conditions here corroded the data." Luke set the holocron down carefully. "But we learned enough. The first Long Night was ended by a Jedi Master working with the Children of the Forest. They used the Force to create the Wall, and they used dragonglass to kill the dead."
He gave them the abbreviated version of what Brandon had said. He watched their faces shift from disbelief to awe to fear.
"A warrior from the stars," Sam breathed. "The legends say the Last Hero had 'walked between worlds.' I thought it was metaphorical!"
Alleras's hands trembled as she set down the ancient tome she had been holding. The leather binding slipped from her fingers to hit the stone floor with a dull thud that echoed through the chamber.
"Outside our world," she whispered. The words caught in her throat like barbs. "There are other worlds?" She pressed her palms flat against the table to steady herself.
Marwyn's reaction was quieter but no less profound. The weathered face of the maester had drained of color, leaving him looking far older than his years. "All my studies. The higher mysteries, the glass candles, the prophecies. I thought I understood the shape of things. But this changes everything."
"The Citadel teaches us the world has rules," Sam's voice cracked high and reedy with panic. "Natural laws. But if there are other worlds and other peoples who can travel between them like sailing between ports..." He gulped air like a drowning man. "Everything we know is wrong. Everything."
Luke watched them with an expression of mild concern, but no surprise. Jon simply crossed his arms impatiently.
"You are not surprised," Alleras stated while staring at them. "How are you not? This should be shaking you to your core!"
"This isn't something new to me," Jon said as he looked to Master Luke.
Sam's mouth opened and closed soundlessly. Then: "You KNEW? You have known this whole time and you just went about your days? Trained with swords? Ate breakfast?"
"What else was I supposed to do?" Jon's grey eyes held a hint of amusement despite the circumstance. "Panic would not change the truth of it."
"The galaxy is enormous," Luke added gently. "Where I come from, traveling between worlds is not uncommon. There are thousands of inhabited planets and billions of beings. Humans are just one species among many."
Marwyn made a strangled sound. "Species. Plural."
"The Force connects all living things," Luke continued. "Across every world and every star. You have felt it yourselves now, that connection. It has always been there. You just did not have words for it before."
Alleras sank into a chair. Her usual composed demeanor was completely shattered. "The implications. The histories we have written. The maps we have drawn. We are like children who thought their nursery was the entire castle."
Jon stood abruptly. "We need to get this information to father and Robb. To the Watch. If the Wall was built with this Force and it is failing, then how much time do we have?"
Luke was already reaching out through the Force to try to sense Robb across the vast distance. The connection was faint and blocked by something, but it was there. Robb was north. Very far north.
Too far north.
"He is beyond the Wall." The words came out sharper than Luke intended.
Jon's face went white. "What? Why would he? That fool! He knows what is out there!"
"Your brother has let his braveness turn to foolishness." Luke pushed harder to get a clearer sense. The Force around Robb felt chaotic and violent, but not dark. He was fighting, but he was alive. "He is alright. For now."
Jon's hands clenched into fists. "We should be there. We should be helping him, not sitting in dusty archives while he faces the dead alone!"
"He is not alone. I can sense others with him." Luke withdrew from the connection. A headache built behind his eyes. "But you are right. We have learned what we can here, and I will try to fix this holocron. It is time to go."
He stopped mid-sentence. Something had shifted in the Force. A ripple of power came from the east. Not the cold darkness of the North, but more grounded.
"Master Luke?" Jon noticed his distraction.
"Something is wrong." Luke stood. His hand instinctively moved to where his lightsaber should be. "From the east. Not a threat, exactly, but significant."
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Kingslanding, The Crownlands
Tyrion Lannister waddled through the Red Keep's corridors, as the wine from his afternoon session with Bronn sloshed unpleasantly in his stomach, but he needed his wits sharp for what came next. Robert had returned from his hunt an hour ago, and by the sounds echoing from the royal apartments, he was already deep in his cups.
Ser Meryn Trant stood outside Robert's chambers, barely glancing at him as he passed. Being acting Hand had its privileges, even if the position felt more like a noose than a chain of office. Tyrion found the king in his solar, sprawled in a chair that groaned under his weight, a goblet of strongwine clutched in one meaty fist.
"Your Grace," Tyrion said, executing a bow that would have been mocking from anyone else but seemed merely practical from a dwarf. "Since you returned early, I trust the hunt was successful?"
Robert grunted, not looking up from the fire. Three empty wine jugs littered the floor around his chair, and a fourth sat half-empty on the table beside him. The king's doublet was unlaced, revealing a sweat-stained shirt beneath that strained against his belly.
"Killed a boar," Robert muttered. "Big bastard. Not as big as the one that nearly got me at Storm's End, but..." He trailed off, taking another long pull from his goblet.
Tyrion settled himself into a chair across from the king, noting the tremor in Robert's hands, the way his bloodshot eyes kept darting toward the door. Something had the king on edge, and it wasn't just the wine.
"The realm prospers under your rule," Tyrion ventured, testing the waters. "The harvest has been good, trade flows freely—"
"DO YOU KNOW ABOUT THE TAXES?!"
The roar came so suddenly that Tyrion nearly tumbled from his chair. Robert surged to his feet, sending his goblet clattering across the floor, dark wine spreading like blood across the rushes.
"Your Grace?" Tyrion kept his voice carefully neutral, though his mind raced. How had Robert discovered what they'd been hiding from him?
"The Northern taxes!" Robert's face had turned an alarming shade of purple. "Triple what they were! TRIPLE! And nobody thought to tell me? Not my Hand, not my Master of Coin, not my own gods-damned council!"
Tyrion's tongue darted across his lips, buying time. "I assumed Lord Baelish had informed you when he presented the figures to Lord Tywin. The documentation was quite thorough—"
"Baelish told me NOTHING!" Robert kicked one of the empty jugs, sending it smashing against the wall. "A whore told me! A fucking whore in Littlefinger's brothel, chattering about how the Northmen will not be able to afford bread because of the new taxes. Everyone in this fucking city knew except me!"
The king's massive frame shook with rage, and Tyrion could smell the sour reek of wine-sweat pouring off him. This was worse than he'd anticipated. Robert in his cups was dangerous enough, but Robert humiliated was something else entirely.
"Perhaps there was a miscommunication," Tyrion suggested carefully. "These administrative matters can slip by."
"Administrative?" Robert rounded on him, and for a moment Tyrion saw the warrior who'd crushed Rhaegar Targaryen's chest with a warhammer. "My oldest friend thinks I'm bleeding his people dry, and I look like a fool or a tyrant. Maybe both."
Robert grabbed his warhammer from where it leaned against the wall, hefting it with disturbing ease despite his drunken state. "Where is Littlefinger?"
"Your Grace, perhaps we should discuss this when—"
But Robert was already storming from the room, warhammer in hand, bellowing for guards. Tyrion scrambled after him, his short legs pumping furiously to keep pace with the king's massive strides.
They found Littlefinger in his chambers, bent over ledgers with a quill in hand. He looked up with that practiced smile of his, not a hair out of place despite the late hour.
"Your Grace," Baelish rose smoothly, bowing low. "To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?"
"The Northern taxes," Robert snarled, looming over the smaller man. "You raised them without telling me."
Littlefinger's smile never wavered, though Tyrion caught the slight tightening around his eyes. "Your Grace, I merely implemented the crown's fiscal policy as directed by the Queen. Her Grace was quite insistent that we needed additional revenue for the royal wedding she's planning for Prince Joffrey future."
Tyrion watched Robert's face cycle through confusion, understanding, and finally, volcanic rage.
"Cersei?" The name came out as a whisper, then louder. "CERSEI ordered this?"
"I assumed Her Grace had discussed it with you," Littlefinger said, his voice silk over steel. "She presented it as your will, Your Grace. Signed with the royal seal. I have the documents here if you'd like to review them."
But Robert was already gone, charging from the room like a maddened bull, while Ser Meryn followed behind. Tyrion caught Littlefinger's eye for just a moment, saw the satisfaction lurking there, before he was running after the king again.
"Your Grace, wait!" Tyrion's legs burned as he struggled to keep up. Robert was taking the stairs three at a time, his warhammer still clutched in one hand, murder in his eyes.
They were almost to Cersei's chambers when Tyrion heard it: Robert bursting through the door without knocking, a woman's scream, high and terrified, followed by the crash of breaking furniture and a shriek that could have been pain or rage or both. Tyrion stumbled in behind him, and froze at what he saw.
"What in seven hells—" Robert began.
Fuck.